Love Killer
by likerealpeopledo
Summary: Canon Divergent AU if Mindy and Danny never kissed on the plane and they had to carry out the murder pact from JAMCP


Mindy's been pretending that she hasn't noticed the calendar in Danny's office, __the one with the red x's slashed across each box, kind of violently, if you ask her.

First off, who purchases a wall calendar in the year 2017? Is this communist Russia? Has she fallen into a (snooze-fest) black and white movie and that's how they're showing the passage of time? And second of all, if one was going to purchase a wall calendar (because apparently one does not have access to an iPhone, or a smartwatch, or even a cute little pull-off _Phrase of the Day_ one like she bought Betsy a couple of years ago), why would one buy _The Mailboxes of Suffolk County_? What is that even? A man who finds mailboxes—wait for it—sexy. Danny Castellano is the absolute worst.

It is definitely things like this that make her glad that she gets to shoot him.

Or poison his stupid kale salad.

Or unleash a swarm of bees into his office after coating him in honey and patently ignore his plaintive cries for help.

Or throw a toaster into his bubble bath (which, Mindy realizes, is probably more likely to happen to her than him).

Or tie him to train tracks, or push him off the Brooklyn Bridge, or maybe even just introduce him to the Kardashians to see how it turned out. After all, there are plenty of ways for a person to die. Both literally and metaphysically.

The only problem with her plan to murder Danny, because of course it is super awesome and if she tells you, she'll probably have to kill you too, is that, well, turnabout is fair play. Granted, he can't kill her if he's already dead, but that was the original deal. The no-take-backs-no-halfsies-this-is-totally-happening-murder-your-co-worker-slash-kind-of-nemesis-because-neither-of-you-is-capable-of-adult-love-and-you're-really-just-better-off-this-way-don't-puss-out-now-because-it's-been-five-years-and-yep-you're-still-single-you-giant-lonely-screw-up pact.

It was a stupid thing that she'd said in a moment of utter panic, but they'd shook on it, and Danny is always weirdly and sturdily committed to deals made with handshakes. Granted, he didn't spit into this one, so maybe it was somehow less binding, but knowing him, probably not.

And they'd been through a lot together, though separately, in these past five years. She'd been engaged (man, she thought she saw the light at the end of the tunnel there), and then not engaged. Danny had even reunited with that shrew of an ex-wife for a little while, and that house and picket fence in Jersey had given her just a shred of hope that she wasn't going to have to Buttafuoco her co-worker in December of 2017. Not that anyone's counting. (They are both totally counting.)

But Mindy would just like to point out that it's the glee with which Danny has been making those slash marks that really grinds her gears. Okay, fine, she's resigned to murdering him. It's a thing that she has to do because he didn't get it together and go bury the hatchet with his dad so he'd stop being such an open wound all the time. (She's not the one who laughs in the face of closure, for Pete's sake. It's the short, angry, sweaty one that does that.) She's fine, meh, okay with burying a knife in his back IF SHE HAS TO because he never really closed the deal with Eyepatch, or Lucy, or Mary, or Amy, or Sally, or…Jesus, could he date girls with less interesting names? Gross. The point IS, she's doing what she has to do because Danny didn't do what he had to. Drop the wounded-sad-guy-pretending-to-be-fine-guy routine, sack up, and just kiss some chick because he didn't have any other choice, and lock her down. Knock her up. Do something. Idiot.

But anyway, why does he have to be so damn chipper about the fact that he gets to smother her in her sleep? (She's trying to put that one out into the Universe in hopes that it somehow manages to be the way he chooses to, um, snuff her flame.) Because she'd really prefer to go peacefully, since it is more akin to how she's lived her life. IT IS. Stop laughing.

She's never been anything but good to Danny, never done anything except try to be his friend. They've exchanged CAKES (are cakes and gingerbread homes equivalent? For today's purposes, yes), for crap's sake. If you can't exchange baked goods without some return on investment, it isn't worth trading at all. Martha Stewart said that. And she's wicked smart.

And let's just talk about how he could have helped, after all. One time, he hooked her up with his just this side of too-well-read garbage man, and that was it. No further story. There could have been, but did he ever try again? No. That's her point. It's almost like he wants her to kill him. He won't stop giving her reasons, anyway.

She's not even going to get into them all, because ew, boring. Someone could have built a sitcom out of all the ways that Danny annoys her on a daily basis, and all the dumb things he's said and done over the past five years. It's like he can't learn the right lessons or something. He's always gotten the wrong takeaway from every experience, and she's been trying to explain that to him forever, but does he listen? No.

Great. Reason 456 that Danny Castellano has to die. It's like they write themselves.

And she's watched him make hella many mistakes. For a smart guy, he does a metric butt ton of stupid things. Once, he walked around for more than a week with a mustache that he grew. For no reason. He thought it made him look like Clark Gable, whoever the heck that is. A patient had to shriek and yell "Rapist!" before he finally shaved it. He could be an absolutely a maddening individual. With almost zero redeeming qualities.

Except that she has seen him in a t-shirt. And his arms are kind of hot. In a totally clinical way. Because science.

She's noticed how he's super great to his Ma, like almost to the point that she's wondering about a Norman Bates situation sometimes, but really, he takes amazing care of her. She worries a little that if she murders Danny, no, WHEN she murders Danny, his Ma is going to be crushed. No one wants to do that to somebody's mother.

And there have been gingerbread houses, and completely out of the blue, a Secret Santa present that kind of blew her away. She'd admit that the wine had made her a little loopy, and kissing Cliff (ugh, Cliff, was he the one that got away?) sort of made the whole night a blur, but Danny definitely learned the choreography to the _Try Again_ video, and he definitely performed it in her office. And there might have been a moment of some kind afterward, but whatever, her co-workers are morons. And she definitely received a personal check for one hundred dollars two days later, like Danny Castellano was her grandmother.

Danny Castellano IS her grandmother, in at least a hundred ways. He's old and complains a lot and if she hears one more word about the price of gasoline and the death of chivalry and how you SHOULD be scared to ride the subway at night…frankly, she'll kill him.

Oh yeah, she gets to anyway. Making that pact was kind of genius, really. Score one, Lahiri.

And seeing as Danny's just sitting across the hall, laughing maniacally and twiddling his weirdly long thumbs, waiting to fit her with cement shoes and toss her into the Hudson (no, no, don't put that one on the Death Visions Dream Board™) she's just going to have to be equally as cruel.

Because it wasn't like Danny wasn't capable of it. He could say horrible, mean, outlandish things. She'd had even to wield her vagina as a weapon once to get back at him for some of the ridiculously awful things he'd said to her. If you come at Mindy, you get the horns. Not that any part of her va-jay-jay was pointy. Never mind.

And sometimes he could be really sweet and kind, like right before he made the pact with her. He came to comfort her, the only one out of about a zillion people in that party who even attempted to make her feel better when that horny toad Josh was making a fool of her. He skipped a date that night (ugh, Danny, she could have been the ONE) to come back and make sure she wasn't setting fire to her apartment, or slaying an SOB. (Oh, awesome, that pun she made could finally come true.)

And he always put his hand on the small of her back when she was crossing the street, and he'd bring her the sandwich she liked without even asking her order, because he knew what she liked. He always wanted the best for her, even if it meant that—

HOLY SHIT. Danny is in love with her.

That asshole. She is going to kill him.

"WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?" Everything around her seems like it's in a Salvador Dali painting with the melty clocks and somewhere, she swears she hears ticking. Oh God, that's her heart beating in her ears. She's worried maybe Danny hears it too. He stares at her blankly, like she's speaking in a foreign language, from that flummoxed look on his big dumb old face.

That face she thinks she might love too.

Damnit, Danny.

"I'm writing up notes from a patient?" He says it very calm and serene, as if an unhinged person isn't screaming at him in his place of work. But that's what they train you to do. You can't just scream back at the guy who's threatening to blow up the post office - you have to pretend like they're making sense. She hopes she's making sense.

The damn calendar is glaring at her, and she wants to rip it off the wall. Then she does, because something inside her has gone primal, and really impulses are actions at this point. "You're a liar."

Danny crosses his arms, because that's his go-to defensive posture, and frankly, she thinks he does it because it gives his biceps a little lift. No, she knows he does. Because she knows why he does everything, because he's the person she's spent the most time with for the last freaking five years, and neither of them even thought to say, _Hey, let's bone_? What the fresh hell was this? "I'm a liar?"

Oh great. He's doing the thing where he repeats everything, because he always has to have the upper hand. And because he has literally no clue why she's just burst into his office, all sweaty and weird, and he's just trying to employ a stalling tactic. She shakes the calendar at him, the last three red x's still missing from the current week. "You're not going to kill me, are you?"

"Hey, hey, keep it down." He bolts up to the door, shutting it quickly, pretty much right in the new receptionist's nosy face. If Beverly hadn't have been arrested by that cute cop Mindy'd dated, maybe things could have been different. Maybe if Danny wasn't an IDIOT, the whole thing could have been different. "The whole office doesn't have to know our business. Be cool."

Okay fine, shouting about murder pacts is probably against about sixteen Department of Labor Laws, she gets it, but come on, this is serious business. He's been pretending not to love her for five years because he's a damn coward. And a fool. And a liar. Why isn't she killing him yet?

"You know what, Danny, I know your game. I've seen it all before, and let me tell you, somebody else did it better."

If she could take a picture of his face, and the infuriatingly cute way his eyebrow has managed to crawl up into his hairline, she totally would. After she eviscerates him. Duh, priorities.

"Min." Something about his voice, and the scrape-y, soft way he says just the first three letters of her name, hurtles her brain into the now. The clocks revert to their natural solid states, and the room is two dimensional again. "What's this about? Really."

"I think that…I think that you might love me."

"I might?" He smiles. OH GOD. That half crinkly all the way up to his eyeballs, panty dropping tractor beam of a smile that—no, it's never affected her in any way. Maybe just the once, and that orgasm she had later was a COINCIDENCE.

"I think that you are definitely, without a doubt, 150 percent—"

"That's not a valid percentage. There is no such thing as 150 percent of—"

"Danny, the pact was five years, and I'd be three days early, but I will insert this stapler into your nostril if you continue that statement."

"Proceed, counselor." He does a fancy little wave and a bow. She only flinches toward the stapler.

"Very well." Who was this guy? With the little bit of gray near his temple (that was frankly turning into a lot a bit of gray) because he is ANCIENT and the smiling and the rock hard body that he really seems to work at and the unending need to correct her at every freaking turn. "Danny, you're in love with me."

She wants to tell them that really, she's giving him a gift. Loving her, Mindy Lahiri, is pretty much the American dream. She is white picket fences, man. And here she is, a girl, standing in his office, asking him to…okay, part of that was from _Notting Hill_. She's not a robot.

"I am." He doesn't say it as a question, even though if it were her, she would. Not because she doesn't know if she loves him, but because she assumes that's why he's never mentioned it. He just wasn't sure.

"Why didn't you say something, Danny? My eggs are actually rattling around in here. As in, I heard one land last time I ovulated. It made a _bloop_ sound." She shudders, "I'm almost forty! I've been sitting here waiting for Mr. Right when the whole time, he was just sitting on his freaking hands! Pretending to want to murder me! Which, I will give you, is a totally fresh twist on the whole trope, but FUCK YOU, DANNY CASTELLANO. This is our lives!"

"Our lives?"

"Don't get stuck on the verbiage, Mister. This is serious. This is an offense punishable by death! For real!"

He's still doing the crinkly eyed smile thing, but now it's mixing with a rubbing her shoulder thing, and proceeding into a both arms around her waist moment, and there it is, a hug. That sly dog. "Mindy, you're right. I'm not going to kill you. Not in three days, and probably—and this is a big probably—not ever. And if it's all right with you, I think we should officially call off the pact."

She eyes him suspiciously, because what has the last five years been exactly, a dress rehearsal for some backward romantic comedy starring Mindy Lahiri and Danny Castellano? "Why?"

"I think that you know why." See? He's still the worst.

"Tell me why you want to call off the pact."

"Because we aren't both single."

"Oh my god, you found someone else." She gasps.

That eyebrow goes back up, and for a second, she thinks he might be reaching around her back to pick up the nearest blunt implement, "Mindy. Stay on task. I didn't find someone else. There is no one else."

She releases the breath she'd been holding. "Thank God. I thought I'd lost you."

He takes her face in his hands and kisses her, deep and long, until her knees knock together and turn to liquid; bumping her against the desk, and the stapler, until a pen wedges itself into her lower back. "You'd have to kill me first."


End file.
